Sportswriter, award winner David Teel: 'It's the only job I ever wanted'

David Teel's Press Pass

Mike Holtzclaw, mholtzclaw@dailypress.com

The origins of David Teel's sportswriting career hang on his living room wall.

"It was late December of 1968 and I was 9 years old," Teel recalled. "The Baltimore Colts were playing the Cleveland Browns for the NFL championship, and the New York Jets were playing the Oakland Raiders for the AFL championship. My dad handed me a pencil and some notebook paper and told me to write about what I was watching on TV."

In 1992, when his father died, Teel found those pieces of paper among his possessions. Eventually his wife, Jill, learned of their existence and had them framed for display in their Poquoson home.

Those first scribblings of a pre-adolescent sports fan marked the start of a career that earned Teel — a sports reporter and columnist at the Daily Press since 1984 — a spot in the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in Portsmouth. He will be inducted on Saturday.

"It's the only job I ever wanted," Teel said of sports journalism.

Growing up in Baltimore and graduating from James Madison University, he came to the Daily Press after short stays at papers in Ocean City, Md.; Lynchburg, Va.; and Fayetteville, N.C.

But he has stayed at the Daily Press for three decades for both personal and professional reasons. The paper's editors have allowed him to focus on his great love of college sports — he has covered 25 NCAA Final Fours for the Daily Press — and its location kept him within driving distance of his parents, both of whom have passed away.

He recently won his seventh Virginia Sportswriter of the Year Award from the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. He has also earned top prizes from The Associated Press Sports Editors, the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, and the Virginia Press Association.

In covering high school, college and professional sports, he has developed strong relationships with a wide variety of coaches, athletes and administrators around the region.

"David is a very forthright, honest person to deal with," said longtime Hampton High School football coach Mike Smith, who said he plans to attend Saturday's induction banquet. "He's always fair, and when he is writing about a complex issue, he takes the time to handle it thoroughly."

Jeff Jones, who just finished his first season as head men's basketball coach at Old Dominion University, has had a long relationship with Teel dating back to Jones' tenure as an assistant and head basketball coach at University of Virginia from 1982-98.

"The bottom line is, he's a guy I trust," said Jones. "I know what his motives are, and I know he's straightforward. I can always talk to him about any subject, because I always know I'm talking first to a person, not just to a reporter who only wants to get his quotes."

When asked to talk about the stories that especially moved him during his time at the Daily Press, Teel acknowledges that there are many. But in particular his mind goes back to the first football game Virginia Tech played in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It was at Rutgers, just across the river from where the planes had taken down the World Trade Center towers.

"I drove up I-95, and every overpass seemed to have an American flag hanging from it," he recalled. "Before the game, Virginia Tech handed an American flag to a linebacker whose father had been killed by terrorists in Beirut 17 years earlier, and asked him to carry it as they went out onto the field. And then on the second play from scrimmage, making his first college start, he intercepted a pass and took it back to the 1-yard-line. Brian Welch was his name."

As newspapers moved into the digital age, Teel – who will turn 55 in June – enthusiastically embraced the use of blogs and social media as a means of connecting with readers and providing different types of information in new ways.

Perhaps nothing has changed his perspective on sports more than the birth of his daughter, Laura, a little more than 2 years ago. Earlier this year, when the top-seeded Virginia basketball team lost in the NCAA regional at Madison Square Garden in New York, the game ended after midnight. Teel filed his story after the game, did his interviews and added quotes to the online version — and then hopped a red-eye train back home to his wife and daughter, writing his next day's column on a laptop along the way.

"Becoming a dad at age 52 is an amazing and moving experience," he said. "Hopefully it brings you patience that you didn't have before. Every change in life affects you as a writer, because we're all products of our experience."

In looking back at the columns he has written — and looking ahead at those whose deadlines lie ahead — he marvels at how few people are fortunate enough to spend their lives working at jobs they truly enjoy.

The guy who wrote his first sports story in front of a television at age 9 grins.

"It's all I ever wanted to do, and I'm still doing it," he says. "How stupid lucky am I?"